I Know You’re Corrupt, but What am I?

Finally! A comic that talks about one of my pet peeves — the way that local governments give massive tax breaks to large corporations to locate in their areas in the name of “creating jobs”. It doesn’t create a single job, it just moves them from one place to another, and costs local governments lots of money. It is blatant corruption, and should be outlawed.

This was written by Iron Knee. Posted on Saturday, April 28, 2012, at 10:04 am. Filed under Irony. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

4 Comments

TENTHIRTYTWO wrote:

A lot of these companies negotiate lengthy contracts (5-10 years) with freebies and breaks, then pick up shop after the time period is over.

A plant in my brother’s small hometown did just that. Negotiated a sweetheart deal with the county for 7 years, employed a lot of locals, and now that it is expired they are gone. Huge factory is barren and empty. Tons of people unemployed.

So it is actually even worse than just the one time move…they constantly revolve around the country.

Yeah, sort of makes you feel like a cable customer. You know, the new guy to the service gets a great deal, but the guy who has been with them and loyal for years gets the whole bill. Same with banks. Should’nt it be the other way around?

I couldn’t agree more. Iowa has the “value fund” instead of helping local companies that have a stake in the state to expand we pay millions to have companies that don’t need the money to locate here, sometimes in competition with some that are already here. There is a Whirlpool plant literally in my mother’s back yard, the factory has changed hands several times in the last 10 years. When Maytag had it they moved their Ill. operations here, a “right to work” state. They hired a new CEO away from Whirlpool, moved the parts manufacturing to Mexico and fired a bunch of people. Maytag stock went from $40 to $20/share in two years at which point Whirlpool bought it up. Then followed talk of closing the factory, and year after year tax cuts and a new “union” contract which creates a two tier pay scale leaving new hires with much lower pay. Since then there have been several rounds of lay-offs and hiring. Which also means a cut in state income tax collected. Welcome to the Plutocracy!!!

Yeah, Iowa is stupid in it’s incentives to companies. I recall here in Des Moines, Well Fargo got tons of money, tax cuts, and infrastructure improvements to the area where they were gonna build their new building. Corporations are such welfare queens.